Linguistics Symposium

The MULTIMO database was motivated by several overarching motivations: bring together documentation and raw material about multiple modals, compiling this data together to unite it under one area, and set a model for other researchers. This presentation will provide an overview of MULTIMO and multiple modality and demonstrate how researchers and educators can use the site.

First, we wanted to bring together as much raw material as possible documenting multiple modal verbs in English for the benefit of researchers.  Phrases like might could and may should may look un-English to some, but in some areas of the United States they are heard on a daily basis. We realized that we could build on several of our personal compilations of data collected, seek the collections made by other linguists, and draw on many types of publications that for the first time could be gathered in one place. These efforts could make a wealth of existing data accessible and available to those interested in exploring geographical, historical, syntactic, and other aspects of multiple modals and, we hoped, in testing new hypotheses about their structure, use, and distribution.

Second, we believed that a website compilation was called for because published raw material on multiple modals was becoming increasingly scattered and unpublished portions of it were in some danger of disappearing.  As for many other features and areas of morpho-syntax that are found in regional and social varieties of English, the literature on multiple modals had proliferated over the past half-century, becoming more and more challenging to keep track of.  Inevitably the fragmentation of research (on both sides of the Atlantic) had made broad views and consensus knowledge more elusive.  Such a state of affairs justified a retrieval operation. 

Third, we wanted to create a replicable model for other features or areas of English morpho-syntax. MULTIMO compiles all known published references on multiple modals in an annotated bibliography and extracts as much primary data from these sources as possible. More than that, the site mines those sources for as much linguistic context and social information on users of multiple modals as possible.

In this talk we will challenge the concept of a unified standard English and how grammar is taught in school settings. Most students who attended public schools from the late 1990s into the 2020s have not had much direct grammar instruction; however, in many states, the new standards have a “Grammar Continuum '' that specifies grammatical concepts to be taught. Additionally, language usage is tested on gateway and end-of-course tests primarily through error detection and correction. Even though these standards are taken from White Mainstream English, all public school students are held accountable for knowing it, and all teachers are tasked with teaching it. Though teachers have been told that the best way to teach grammar is in the context of writing, most do not know how to go about integrating language study into daily reading and writing. Not only will this talk redefine what grammar study can look like in an English language classroom, it will also engage participants in specific activities that encourage students to recognize and value their own linguistic diversity and to think about language more contextually and comprehensively.